Review: ‘Tiger Jam’ crowd disappointed

Kirk Baird

Monday, April 22, 2002 | 8:27 a.m.

There was at least one positive that emerged from "Tiger Jam V," Tiger Woods' annual concert fund-raiser for his Tiger Woods Foundation.

The foundation focuses on community-based, youth-oriented programs, including children's charities in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. And Woods himself, in a quick "thank-you" speech to the crowd, announced that the show generated nearly $900,000 for the organization.

Still, despite the money raised, Saturday night's concert at Mandalay Bay Events Center, which featured Don Henley, Train and brief appearances by comedians Dennis Miller and Kevin James, was ultimately disappointing.

It was not the performers themselves, whom Woods green lights.

The pairing of Henley and Train was actually quite complementary: Henley, despite his continued solo success, will always best be known for his days with pioneering '70s country-rock band the Eagles. And Train is a group that straddles that '70s classic-rock sound, while incorporating its own modern rock/pop edge.

And both James and Miller are quite capable of selling out medium-sized halls on their own.

But there was definitely something lacking at "Tiger Jam V" and the audience -- the 12,000-seat center was three-fourths full, at best -- picked up on it. Or, maybe they generated the apathy themselves.

Both Train and Henley's sets were greeted with a mixture of warmth, curiosity and boredom. But try as the artists might, the crowd rarely got into the music.

And the 5- to 10-minute stand-up acts that James and Miller each delivered was hardly enough to get the crowd going, either. It seemed as soon as the audience was into each comedian's act, the comics left the stage.

Henley picked up on the lackadaisical mood of the crowd a few songs into his set: "I've got a drinking song for you ... sounds just like what you need," he said before launching into Earl Thomas Conley's country classic "You Must Not Be Drinking Enough."

Neither Henley's cure nor suggestion helped much.

Rarely did the crowd show much enthusiasm during the singer's 12-song set, although some of that apathy could be blamed on his song selection.

Henley had finished a rousing version of "Life in the Fast Lane," which had the majority of the crowd standing and singing along, when he killed some of the momentum with the slow-tempo, adult-contemporary hit "Heart of the Matter."

"Heart of the Matter" was followed by an ill-advised percussion/drum solo that wasted several minutes, while the rest of the band took a break -- seven songs into the set list -- as did many members of the crowd.

Henley and Co. returned to the stage to belt out one more tune, "All She Wants to Do is Dance," before exiting again.

In fairness to Henley, he did return minutes later for a stellar three-song encore that included a sumptuous and sparse rendering of "End of Innocence" and the can't-go-wrong Eagles classic "Hotel California" as his closer.

Still, there was not much to work with this night; the crowd was never really into the show, as Henley noted early on during his performance.

"Just talk amongst yourselves, don't mind me," he said. "I'm just hanging out."

Opening act Train didn't fare any better.

Fresh off two Grammy wins for the song "Drops of Jupiter," and the top-10 hit in "Meet Virginia" to its credit, for Train -- despite the band's best efforts -- it was the classics that generated the most audience approval: covers of Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On" and Aerosmith's "Dream On."

For many in the audience, it was more about being at the concert than enjoying it.

archive